Reverence declares, “All of the things God established please me. I do not hurt any of them.” ~Hildegard of Bingen, Book of Life’s Merits

Last spring, we hosted a tree~planting day at our diocesan camp, and a sweet family with four little girls, all under the age of six, joined us for this endeavor. While not particularly interested in tree planting, one of the girls was quite invested in finding and rescuing worms. Each time she found a worm, she placed it with great reverence on a dandelion, one of thousands that month that colored the fields.

Here at camp, we like the dandelions because the bees like the dandelions. And we like the bees because we like the squash, tomatoes and apples that they pollinate—and of course, we love the honey they make for us as well. But deciding to have a campus that is polka~dotted with dandelions did not happen by accident. It is a choice that we continue to make as a sign of reverence, a sign of delight in what God has established.

Often, we think of God’s creation in terms of individual items or categories. We thank God for the tree, the rain and the apple seed. We work to save a river, a species or a person. We fight for a single cause. And yet, the total ecosystem that God has established requires our reverence: bees, dandelions, crooked~neck squash, honey and families are just a few members of the larger ecosystem. To care for any of these members, we must repent for our frequent neglect of the whole and remember that wherever we are, because God loves it, we are standing on holy ground.

For Reflection

Consider the ecosystem of a community in your life. What practices related to one member potentially damage the whole? What changes could positively affect the whole ecosystem?

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